February 2024 Budget

February has been a mixed bag when it comes to the success of our budgeting.  We did spend over what we had budgeted for, some of which couldn't be helped but some definitely could have been, but we also somehow managed to put a good amount towards our savings.  Could we have done better, obviously yes, did we still do really well...also yes.

As always, our spending on our general bills has pretty much remained the same, which is actually lucky as it means none of them have been put up just yet.  We did, however, spend more on our gas bill and that's because this month has been a little bit colder than the last so our heating has had to work harder.  I'm expecting March to be pretty similar, but then after that, we should be able to get our gas bill back down again.

I did buy a few more things for our house than I normally do (in fact normally I spend absolutely nothing) but that's because we've decided to stay here a little bit longer than we had originally planned so I want to fix some things that had been annoying me a little bit.  It's not really that important, but it does make living here more enjoyable for me at least.  We also quite a bit on food again this month.  Whilst it's been nowhere near as bad as the spending we did last year we are sneaking back into old bad habits.  It's not anything we can't pull back on and March will be the month we do that on.  Food spending is always going to be our weak point so we really do need to keep an eye on it.

We've been spending more on fuel as well and a big part of that was due to the fact that my work was in a different location to Ed's so when he came to pick me up at the end of the day we were putting extra miles on the car.  Now that my new job is in a similar location to his that should bring the cost back down again, although we are doing a trip to Swindon next month so I do expect that it won't drop completely in March.

That's also where the cost for the day out has come from as we've booked an Airbnb for the one night we're in Swindon and there'll probably be some extra spending on things like food when we're there as well so that's something we should really be putting money aside for - something to think about when the craving for a takeaway comes along.  Our own personal spending hasn't really been great this month either.  Firstly we needed to restock the oils that we use to make my face moisturiser and Ed's beard oil.  It was over £70 but it should last us for the year at least.  I then got water damage on my phone and needed to get a new phone screen.  Thankfully as I have a Fairphone I was able to just buy that online and then change the screen myself, but it did still cost about £85.  However, even with those two large spends our personal spending in total didn't end up going over our budget by too much and, as we underspent last month, I'm not too worried about it.

The biggest plus for this month is how much we were able to put into our savings and sinking funds.  We did sell some things in January and that money went straight into our savings, but we were also able to put quite a bit from our wages into savings as well and I decided that we would just complete our sinking fund for Christmas so that our main focus for the rest of the year can be on our four months savings.  That has been a really big positive for us and a good incentive to keep us working towards our financial goals for this year.  

So, some ups and downs, but overall I feel like February has mostly been positive.  There are definitely places where we can improve and, if we want to keep doing as well as this, we need to improve as our income will be dropping a little bit from March.  However, I think we can do it and that means we could actually reach our savings goals a lot earlier than we have planned.  Now that would be very satisfying.